by Jonathan Ingram, Barbara Tozier and the PG Online
Distributed Proofreading Team

THE COLLECTED WORKS OF

AMBROSE BIERCE

VOLUME 1

1909

CONTENTS

ASHES OF THE BEACON

THE LAND BEYOND THE BLOW
THITHER
SONS OF THE FAIR STAR
AN INTERVIEW WITH GNARMAG-ZOTE
THE TAMTONIANS
MAROONED ON UG
THE DOG IN GANGEWAG
A CONFLAGRATION IN GHARGAROO
AN EXECUTION IN BATRUGIA
THE JUMJUM OF GOKEETLE-GUK
THE KINGDOM OF TORTIRRA
HITHER

FOR THE AHKOOND

JOHN SMITH, LIBERATOR

BITS OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY
ON A MOUNTAIN
WHAT I SAW OF SHILOH
A LITTLE OF CHICKAMAUCA
THE CRIME AT PICKETT'S MILL
FOUR DAYS IN DIXIE
WHAT OCCURRED AT FRANKLIN
'WAY DOWN IN ALABAM'
WORKING FOR AN EMPRESS
ACROSS THE PLAINS
THE MIRAGE
A SOLE SURVIVOR

ASHES OF THE BEACON

ASHES OF THE BEACON

AN HISTORICAL MONOGRAPH WRITTEN IN 4930

Of the many causes that conspired to bring about the lamentable failure of
"self-government" in ancient America the most general and comprehensive
was, of course, the impracticable nature of the system itself. In the
light of modern culture, and instructed by history, we readily discern the
folly of those crude ideas upon which the ancient Americans based what
they knew as "republican institutions," and maintained, as long as
maintenance was possible, with something of a religious fervor, even when
the results were visibly disastrous. To us of to-day it is clear that the
word "self-government" involves a contradiction, for government means
control by something other than the thing to be controlled. When the thing
governed is the same as the thing governing there is no government, though
for a time there may be, as in the case under consideration there was, a
considerable degree of forbearance, giving a misleading appearance of
public order. This, however, soon must, as in fact it soon did, pass away
with the delusion that gave it birth. The habit of obedience to written
law, inculcated by generations of respect for actual government able to
enforce its authority, will persist for a long time, with an ever
lessening power upon the imagination of the people; but there comes a time
when the tradition is forgotten and the delusion exhausted. When men
perceive that nothing is restraining them but their consent to be
restrained, then at last there is nothing to obstruct the free play of
that selfishness which is the dominant characteristic and fundamental
motive of human nature and human action respectively. Politics, which may
have had something of the character of a contest of principles, becomes a
struggle of interests, and its methods are frankly serviceable to personal
and class advantage. Patriotism and respect for law pass like a tale that
is told. Anarchy, no longer disguised as "government by consent," reveals
his hidden hand, and in the words of our greatest living poet,

lets the curtain fall,
And universal darkness buries all!

The ancient Americans were a composite people; their blood was a blend of
all the strains known in their time. Their government, while they had one,
being merely a loose and mutable expression of the desires and caprices of
the majority--that is to say, of the ignorant, restless and reckless--gave
the freest rein and play to all the primal instincts and elemental
passions of the race. In so far and for so long as it had any restraining
force, it was only the restraint of the present over the power of the
past--that of a new habit over an old and insistent tendency ever seeking
expression in large liberties and indulgences impatient of control. In the
history of that unhappy people, therefore, we see unveiled the workings of
the human will in its most lawless state, without fear of authority or
care of consequence. Nothing could be more instructive.

Of the American form of government, although itself the greatest of evils
afflicting the victims of those that it entailed, but little needs to be
said here; it has perished from the earth, a system discredited by an
unbroken record of failure in all parts of the world, from the earliest
historic times to its final extinction. Of living students of political
history not one professes to see in it anything but a mischievous creation
of theorists and visionaries--persons whom our gracious sovereign has
deigned to brand for the world's contempt as "dupes of hope purveying to
sons of greed." The political philosopher of to-day is spared the trouble
of pointing out the fallacies of republican government, as the
mathematician is spared that of demonstrating the absurdity of the
convergence of parallel lines; yet the ancient Americans not only clung to
their error with a blind, unquestioning faith, even when groaning under
its most insupportable burdens, but seem to have believed it of divine
origin. It was thought by them to have been established by the god
Washington, whose worship, with that of such _dii minores_ as Gufferson,
Jaxon and Lincon (identical probably with the Hebru Abrem) runs like a
shining thread through all the warp and woof of the stuff that garmented
their moral nakedness. Some stones, very curiously inscribed in many
tongues, were found by the explorer Droyhors in the wilderness bordering
the river Bhitt (supposed by him to be the ancient Potomac) as lately as
the reign of Barukam IV. These stones appear to be fragments of a monument
or temple erected to the glory of Washington in his divine character of
Founder and Preserver of republican institutions. If this tutelary deity
of the ancient Americans really invented representative government they
were not the first by many to whom he imparted the malign secret of its
inauguration and denied that of its maintenance.

Although many of the causes which finally, in combination, brought about
the downfall of the great American republic were in operation from the
beginning--being, as has been said, inherent in the system--it was not
until the year 1995 (as the ancients for some reason not now known
reckoned time) that the collapse of the vast, formless fabric was
complete. In that year the defeat and massacre of the last army of law and
order in the lava beds of California extinguished the final fires of
enlightened patriotism and quenched in blood the monarchical revival.
Thenceforth armed opposition to anarchy was confined to desultory and
insignificant warfare waged by small gangs of mercenaries in the service
of wealthy individuals and equally feeble bands of prescripts fighting for
their lives. In that year, too, "the Three Presidents" were driven from
their capitals, Cincinnati, New Orleans and Duluth, their armies
dissolving by desertion and themselves meeting death at the hands of the
populace.

The turbulent period between 1920 and 1995, with its incalculable waste of
blood and treasure, its dreadful conflicts of armies and more dreadful
massacres by passionate mobs, its kaleidoscopic changes of government and
incessant effacement and redrawing of boundaries of states, its
interminable tale of political assassinations and proscriptions--all the
horrors incident to intestinal wars of a naturally lawless race--had so
exhausted and dispirited the surviving protagonists of legitimate
government that they could make no further head against the inevitable,
and were glad indeed and most fortunate to accept life on any terms that
they could obtain.

But the purpose of this sketch is not bald narration of historic fact, but
examination of antecedent germinal conditions; not to recount calamitous
events familiar to students of that faulty civilization, but to trace, as
well as the meager record will permit, the genesis and development of the
causes that brought them about. Historians in our time have left little
undone in the matter of narration of political and military phenomena. In
Golpek's "Decline and Fall of the American Republics," in Soseby's
"History of Political Fallacies," in Holobom's "Monarchical Renasence,"
and notably in Gunkux's immortal work, "The Rise, Progress, Failure and
Extinction of The Connected States of America" the fruits of research have
been garnered, a considerable harvest. The events are set forth with such
conscientiousness and particularity as to have exhausted the possibilities
of narration. It remains only to expound causes and point the awful moral.

To a delinquent observation it may seem needless to point out the inherent
defects of a system of government which the logic of events has swept like
political rubbish from the face of the earth, but we must not forget that
ages before the inception of the American republics and that of France and
Ireland this form of government had been discredited by emphatic failures
among the most enlightened and powerful nations of antiquity: the Greeks,
the Romans, and long before them (as we now know) the Egyptians and the
Chinese. To the lesson of these failures the founders of the eighteenth
and nineteenth century republics were blind and deaf. Have we then reason
to believe that our posterity will be wiser because instructed by a
greater number of examples? And is the number of examples which they will
have in memory really greater? Already the instances of China, Egypt,
Greece and Rome are almost lost in the mists of antiquity; they are known,
except by infrequent report, to the archæologist only, and but dimly and
uncertainly to him. The brief and imperfect record of yesterdays which we
call History is like that traveling vine of India which, taking new root
as it advances, decays at one end while it grows at the other, and so is
constantly perishing and finally lost in all the spaces which it has
over-passed.

From the few and precious writings that have descended to us from the
early period of the American republic we get a clear if fragmentary view
of the disorders and lawlessness affecting that strange and unhappy
nation. Leaving the historically famous "labor troubles" for more extended
consideration, we may summarize here a few of the results of hardly more
than a century and a quarter of "self-government" as it existed on this
continent just previously to the awful end. At the beginning of the
"twentieth century" a careful study by trustworthy contemporary
statisticians of the public records and those apparently private ones
known as "newspapers" showed that in a population of about 80,000,000 the
annual number of homicides was not less than 10,000; and this continued
year after year to increase, not only absolutely, but proportionately,
until, in the words of Dumbleshaw, who is thought to have written his
famous "Memoirs of a Survivor" in the year 1908 of their era, "it would
seem that the practice of suicide is a needless custom, for if a man but
have patience his neighbor is sure to put him out of his